[Coco] Back to BASIC

Thu Apr 6 10:21:52 EDT 2017

Great story, Steve.  It's too bad all your old programs aren't still around
- it would have been cool to see them, and it would have made a great topic
for a video.  (My personal Apple ][+ BASIC disk went missing along the way
too, but I'm really glad to still have all my old simple BASIC CoCo
programs I wrote.)

Thanks for the continued BASIC chapter video posts!

Brendan

On Thu, Apr 6, 2017 at 8:41 AM, Alexander Wallace <
alexander.o.wallace at gmail.com> wrote:

> Thanks for sharing your experience!
>
> I never got to do anything serious (programming wise) beyond maybe
> managing my printer with the CoCo… I knew basic basic and pascal, but
> mostly used it go do my high school and college homework, and play games…
>
> But I have no doubt the early experience with the CoCo shaped my career,
> even though I studied Industrial Engineering, I work as a software
> developer, it was just naturally, and I’m pretty good at it luckily. I owe
> a lot of it to the experience with the CoCo that prepped my brain for the
> type of thinking you need to do complex/abstract thinking in the line of
> work i do now.
>
> Like I mentioned before though, other computers after, have never made me
> feel the same way the CoCo did so I had to pull it out and like you, I want
> to learn assembly now, and play with OS9 (or NitrOS), for fun and for the
> pleasure of learning, and of sharing something with this community.
>
> Thanks again and please keep doing what you do, I look forward to the
> Assembly series!
>
>
> > On Apr 6, 2017, at 8:23 AM, Steve Strowbridge <ogsteviestrow at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >
> > Thank you Alexander for the kind words!
> >
> > Seven Chapters!! Wow!! I hope you didn't get bored to sleep and end up
> > injuring yourself in the work shop :)
> >
> > BASIC on the CoCo was my entry into computer programming, like most kids
> of
> > the day, I'm sure, I followed the very user friendly book, actually
> > "learned" the language and was able to apply it and create original
> > programs, I rarely "typed in" any programs, I enjoyed the process of
> coming
> > up with the ideas, then working out the logistics of making everything
> work.
> >
> > I started on a 16K Standard BASIC, and cut my teeth on that for a year or
> > two, my 2nd CoCo was the 64K white CoCo 1 with Extended Color BASIC and I
> > went to town with that, loved doing high res games with PMODE 3 and 4,
> > using PCOPY and GET/PUT to create sprites, move objects without erasing
> the
> > background, experiment with screen scrolling, etc.
> >
> > All the things I saw the pros do in assembly, I tried to mimic in ECB,
> and
> > other than the vast difference in speed, I was able to recreate most of
> the
> > tricks.  For whatever reason, it never occurred to me that I could also
> > attempt to learn assembly myself, I was a kid, and I thought that was
> what
> > grown ups did.  I went to college for computer programming, and thought
> it
> > would be taught to me there, I was disappointed that it wasn't, they were
> > covering DBase, Fortran, Cobol, and BASIC, and BASIC I already knew, and
> > those others, I had no interest in, so I didn't say in college for
> > programming.
> >
> > I transitioned from CoCo to the Tandy 1000 in 1986, I got ahold of MS
> > QBasic sometime after that, and enjoyed many years through up to the late
> > 90's programming in Quick BASIC on MS-DOS based systems.
> >
> > Anything I ever made was always a game, I had no interest in anything
> > "serious".
> >
> > My biggest claim to fame, with my own software was a game I made, which
> > actually started as an "I told you so" in College, where I told the guy
> > sitting next to me "I can make a space invaders game", and he said "no
> you
> > can't" and before the class was over, I already had the skeleton of the
> > game up and running in QBASIC.
> >
> > That became a game called "Cosmic Aliens", it was DOS Text based, the
> > smiley faces characters were the aliens, they dropped bombs, there was a
> > text character that looked like a bomb, and your ship was two characters
> > together that looked like a line graphic space ship, you shot arrows up
> in
> > the air like Galaga.
> >
> > That game grew over time, was circulated through BBS systems, I put the
> > usual shareware messages on there, like "if you'd like to support this
> > game, mail a check to..." and at one point and time, the "mail to"
> address
> > what the retail store I worked at in Fort Lauderdale called the Byte
> Shop.
> >
> > Turns out, the game was a favorite of a person in the military, and he
> said
> > he and his buddies like the game, I found this out, because he came to
> > visit me at the Byte Shop to tell me that.  I was blown away by that.  I
> > grabbed the source code and modified it, and created a custom version for
> > him, and gave him the updated EXE file, he was happy about that.  I
> think I
> > also got a random product review of that game somebody mailed me, and
> even
> > an offer to buy it by a company in Canada called Ninga software or
> > something like that.  My 15 minutes of game fame were under a very small
> > spotlight, but it was very rewarding to know somebody in the military was
> > able to entertain themselves while at a base with my game.
> >
> > Another game I made for DOS, which never got circulated was called
> "Garden
> > Worm" and it was a spin on Centipede, where you were the Centipede, so
> kind
> > of a hack clone of the various Snake type games, there was food to eat to
> > get larger, there were prizes for points, and there were special items
> that
> > would either make you bigger, smaller, faster, or slower, and there was
> an
> > enemy centipede "worm" you had to avoid.
> >
> > I wrote a ton of games on the CoCo, my most interesting was a Donkey Kong
> > clone based on the rivets level where you jumped over rivets to clear the
> > board, to make this game, I created a level editor, and then it became
> sort
> > of game engine oriented where basically you could create any level with
> any
> > arrangement and number of rivets, and as long as you could get to them
> all,
> > and pop them all, you could clear the level.  You would have to specify
> > where you wanted the animated donkey kong to stand, and how many fire
> balls
> > you wanted and their starting position.  Other than that, the game ran
> with
> > whatever design you could throw at it.  This was all done in the low res
> > 64*32*9 color mode, but was quite playable.
> >
> > My biggest regret is not having any of my original floppies, I had them
> all
> > until the early 90's even, let somebody borrow my CoCo and my floppy
> case,
> > they ended up getting evicted from their apartment, and they were never
> > seen again.
> >
> > Long answer, to your post, I'm sure, but... What I wanted to do with this
> > series, was to re-learn the language, perhaps get some new people
> > interested in simple programming concepts, and at the end of the book,
> > start working on a new, original CoCo game project in BASIC, maybe even a
> > few games.
> >
> > That's still the plan, and I also plan on learning assembly, which I
> might
> > as well also turn into a series, and then come up with a game at the end
> of
> > that, which, hopefully, I'll be able to debut at next year's CoCoFEST!
> >
> > -End of Line
> >
> >
> > Steve Strowbridge, aka
> > The Original Gamer Stevie Strow
> > http://ogsteviestrow.com
> > ogsteviestrow at gmail.com
> >
> >
> > On Thu, Apr 6, 2017 at 8:51 AM, Alexander Wallace <
> > alexander.o.wallace at gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >> I’ve worked as a software developer, mostly client/server and web apps
> >> since 1997, but my memory of CoCo’s Basic and other of it’s languages
> has
> >> pretty much disappeared as I’ve recently found out :)
> >>
> >> Your videos are a great companion tome while doing something else in the
> >> evenings, (metal or wood working or what not), I watched 7 yesterday,
> and
> >> really enjoyed it!
> >>
> >> I truly appreciate what you’re doing there and look forward to seeing
> all
> >> the videos for all the chapters, some for CoCo3 too and assembly :)
> >>
> >> Thanks a lot!
> >>
> >>> On Apr 5, 2017, at 3:30 PM, Steve Strowbridge <ogsteviestrow at gmail.com
> >
> >> wrote:
> >>>
> >>> It's been a long time coming, but I got around to going through and
> >>> recording two new chapters in my programming in BASIC video series, so
> >>> chapters 10 and 11 are now available for your viewing discomfort.
> >>>
> >>> The play list to the entire series is:
> >>> https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLDfh7JjQaSYA1fP5KwRiOwefFIIF1
> Alid
> >>>
> >>> I started this series aimed at a non-technical, non-coco owner, so it's
> >>> based on using VCC as the emulator, and using the PDF of the CoCo 2
> >>> Extended color BASIC manual from the Color Computer Archive.
> >>>
> >>> I had planned last year to finish the book, make a simple game in BASIC
> >> as
> >>> a project putting all the pieces together, and then move on to
> assembly,
> >>> and try and learn that.
> >>>
> >>> That didn't exactly happen, so going to try and make that happen this
> >> year,
> >>> and have this series done, and some type of assembly project to show
> off
> >> at
> >>> CoCoFEST 27.
> >>>
> >>> Thanks to all who have encouraged me to continue to do these, it's can
> be
> >>> quite brutal for me at times :)
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> Steve Strowbridge, aka
> >>> The Original Gamer Stevie Strow
> >>> http://ogsteviestrow.com
> >>> ogsteviestrow at gmail.com
> >>>
> >>> --
> >>> Coco mailing list
> >>> Coco at maltedmedia.com
> >>> https://pairlist5.pair.net/mailman/listinfo/coco
> >>
> >>
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> >>
> >
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